Page 79 of Shifted

"We have to go, get the choppers." I hear him demand. It was now, or it was never.

Two guards patrol past me, and from behind, I slit their throats and watch them collapse to the floor. They coughed slightly with barely any reaction time as I stepped over them. My finger laid steady on the trigger, and I found myself in the room. Taking in the final seconds of my life, I felt the adrenaline.

Two men stood inside, and a dagger went right into the back of the first guard next and a bullet into the others. Behind me, I close the doors, locking them. As I turned, he stood, waiting. But in turn, he begins to clap his hands, staring at the two guards, “Bravo,” he says, a wide-spread grin across his face.

"We didn't get a proper introduction," I say, and I wipe the blood falling from my nose. "Look at you, princess, what a hot mess." He gestures to the wound in my torso. "Come on, I can get you medical attention. We don't have to do this?" He offers. But I knew he’d held me captive for years to get answers, and death was better than this.

"I'm as good as dead, and since I know what you did to your wife, son, and baby girl," I raise the gun to his sweaty, creased forehead, "So are you... I don't take pleas; I hope you can understand." Before he could speak, the bullet cut through his brain. Impacting the frontal lobe removing all executive functions, and cutting through the nervous system, then through the back. He falls to my feet, where blood pools to the floor.

I felt my body growing weaker as I dragged myself out of the room. I move back towards the staircase, and a bullet flies into any guard in my eyesight. My arm slams against the wall as a sharp-pain ripples through my side and as I push open the door to the roof. Nothing was there, nobody was there.

The little Hope I had for Isaac returning to get me was small, but I felt like it would be there. I didn't think this was the end of my story, so I found myself on my knees as my legs gave out. I think of the one person who matters: my child. I did my job as a mother, but she wouldn't remember me clearly someday. I'd be a faint memory in her life.

She only got me for three of seventy-seven years. I'd never get to see her grow, and that pain hurts more than the burning bullet inside me. She belonged to Theo, in my will, at the end of my life. In the circumstance that I wouldn't make it, she'd go to her father.

I knew that he thought she wasn't his when she met him, for reasons I'll never know the truth behind, but by the time he came home, and not a singular question of whose child she was, I felt like it was too late. He was going to go back to Chicago eventually, and this would ruin his career.

But I wanted him, and I wanted him to be her dad no matter how much pain I felt. But that was taken from him because I didn't try hard enough, and he missed it. So maybe this was karma in some twisted way. I took his first three years, so I don't get the other seventy-three left with her.

I didn't even realize I began crying until the puddle below me was soaking my shirt, mixing with the blood. The harder it got to breathe, the closer I knew I was. Seconds away from passing out, I felt the dizziness.

Then I heard it faintly.

The sound of a chopper in the distance, a cruel hallucination of my time left. I saw it distantly coming closer. But if anything, it was for the other guys. I wasn't being saved, so as it hit the platform, I shut my eyes, curling into the ground. This is where I'd die.

Footsteps follow as the chopper touches down. I felt a light kick to my arm, and as I looked up, I couldn't believe the sight in front of my eyes. A painful cough left my mouth as I stared at Eros. A stupid smile spread across his face.

"So these are your extracurriculars, Taylor?" Lucas raised a brow at me. I couldn’t believe my eyes, and maybe I was dead. Perhaps this was the false hope in hysteria moments before I die. The fake belief that I was saved.

"I always knew there was something secretly fucked up about you," I jest, and he’s quick to move over to me. "Who do you think Isaac works for? Himself?" he laughed, and I was lifted into Lucas's arms. But I couldn’t feel it; I couldn't feel below my torso.

"My guardian Angel," I tease him.

"Nosokomeío!" He yells at the pilot, and the door closes. As I stared at the rooftop, a puddle of my blood could be seen smeared across the pavement.

"I'm not going to make it, Lucas." He looked at me like I was ridiculous. No was never an answer for him. I felt my eyes wanting to succumb to slumber, but as I fluttered them slowly, a slap stung my face. "You don't get to die today, seriously, do you know how much that would suck?" His hand brushed back my hair as I began to cough.

"Are you admitting you actually like me, Lucas?" He shook his head at me, annoyed.

"I think you're okay, don't get all hot and bothered," I glared at him.

"You think I can get hot and bothered right now? I can't feel most of me" he stared at me as if I was being dramatic. But as I coughed again with crimson staining my hand. His face changed, "How far out are we?" he yells to the pilot.

"A few minutes, sir."

"If I'm going to die, tell me who you really are." My voice comes out in a whisper and not in the way I pictured me saying it in my head. My supposed frenemy and close co-worker was really my boss after all this time. The one calling the shots and trying to protect me.

"I'm Lucas Brand. I am a lawyer, but maybe— just maybe, I live a double life," he shrugs. But now I was more skeptical after all this time, he knew. He knew who I was and what I did and coincidentally worked for me.

"Did you know about me? Is that why I was hired so that you could befriend me... you always knew who the killer-"

"Of men, the killer of the cruelest men and women out there. You were guaranteed to get the job done. People hunted you for years. But I knew who Angel was; she was my best friend. You're good at your job, Hope. I even suggested you to Mr. Reign. I just had other cases for you." A smile formed on his face as he stared at me.

This would be the last person and the last time I saw something, and it was Lucas. This is the end of the road for us. It was ironic that I'd die in the arms of the man who squealed at a spider—but turned out to be the one running the show the whole time.

"You knew where my money comes from." After all that time with his questioning, he knew. Maybe he was trying to play with me or flush me out, but in the end, my money came from him. "One boujee ass bitch you are, no good deed goes unpunished, Hope. There's not a soul like you. You do what you do to help people, not for money." He says, and I felt the helicopter touch down to the ground and soon I couldn't hear him anymore—I could just see the words forming in his mouth.

I witnessed my body being lifted as all feeling had left me, and as I looked over to Lucas, an oxygen mask obstructed my view. The weight against my eyelids was unbearable, and I just needed to shut them for a moment.

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